The University of Central Florida has managed to recruit their newest graduate student. A further financial award came in the mail this morning, and that combined with last night's email from UNC letting me know they weren't going to be extending me an offer have sealed the deal. In a few short months I will be a PhD student.

What am I doing?

...some time passes...

Well, I've talked with lindsey, my mom, and my sister, and they all think I'm making the right decision. I tend to agree, and I have a growing peace with it. Now, I'm just nervous. It's a good nervous though.

I couldn't bring myself to call UCF and turn them down. Every time I thought I had my mind made up, some well meaning person said something to make me reconsider. Yesterday, my dentist said "Ok, they offer you paid tuition and a stipend. What's the choice here?"

So, I'm going to think on it, and pray on it this weekend and make my final decision on Monday. If I don't die of an anxiety attack before then. This is soooo stressful.

Can I go back to communal living?

Should I wait for UNC? Update: They rejected me, so this is a non-issue. I was two months late getting my application in, though

Do I really want a PhD?

Will I be happy programming .NET at $SOME_LOCAL_COMPANY?

Will Margo tell Jack she's really having John's cloned baby?

Wait, that last one isn't me.

All you PhD computer science students here... give me feedback!

Computing

I'm trying to extract a cpio archive made on a SCO box using a Seagate Travan drive. I'm trying to extract it using a HP SureStore T4 Travan drive on my Redhat Linux box. So far, nothing's happening other than the tape is winding forwards and back a lot. I'll let it run for a while and check on it tomorrow. I may have to take more drastic measures.

Update:cat /dev/st0 > archive.cpio seems to have gotten the data off the tape! Now, I've gotta do something with it.

cmiller and his lovely bride Mary Ellen came over yesterday to help me work on my kitchen. I've been stripping wallpaper and spackling and sanding and generally making a mess most Saturdays for the past two months, all because I didn't like the wallpaper and wanted a nice yellow paint in the kitchen. That'll show me!

I'm so glad to have friends like that who will show up and help. We didn't get much done though. I'm not sure why.

Hey! You know on the bucket of drywall mud where they emphatically state "Avoid Sanding!"? They aren't just blowing drywall dust up your hiney. It will enter most other orifices, though.

Most of the problem was that I had to sand some of the patches I had made in the drywall, and airborne gypsum ain't fun. We took a couple of hours cleaning it up. Then we spent a couple of hours masking stuff off, and then we tried the "rolled on plaster of paris texture technique" someone had recommended. It looked really bad, so we didn't go forward. Good thing I tested it behind the refridgerator.

So, then we ate steaks off the grill. I love my friends, even if I'm a bad host.

Daylight savings time

Who the heck thought this was a good idea?

It's summer, it's hot. Who the heck wants to save daylight? I'm all for donating it to less fortunate countries, like Alabama.

Re:Delitalk - angelfire is disallowing your links into your x86 and src directories, so the two links under your "Download:" section don't work.

It's funny, I've had similar ideas about a true OO operating system.
I haven't written much up about it, but here is what I said in my grad school application personal statement:

I am interested in object oriented operating systems for their potential to reduce application complexity. The current abstractions we use for interacting with the computer do not do enough to manage repetitive and error-prone tasks. For example, should application developers have to worry about persistence at all? An object oriented operating system could handle that. Application developers would simply request an object from the backing store, manipulate it in some way, and forget it. There is no need to keep track of different types of memory, such as disk and RAM; virtualizing all memory and having the OS deal with the difference between volatile and non-volatile storage reduces complexity for all software using its services.

Regarding how to take donations for your web site. It
isn't quite the
same as PayPal (ie: people can change their mind and get a
refund automatically), but Amazon.com's
Honor System sounds like it will do exactly what you want.

Personal

Well, I'm pretty hopped up on caffeine right now. Of all
the legal
mind altering chemicals, it's my favorite.

I'm planning a trip to Orlando to see the UCF CS department. I'm
honored beyond belief by their offer, I'm just still
debating and praying on what's right for me right now. I'm
going down there Thursday. If any UCF CS grad students are
reading this... any of y'all want to give me a real tour?

I just finished All Tomorrow's Parties last night. Well, maybe finished is too strong a word. I think Gibson just got tired of writing, because nothing seemed to be explained or resolved. The whole book seemed to build to a climax that never happened. Weird.

As you're probably aware, Yahoo! is going to start charging for
pop3 access to your account. If you're like many, and haven't enabled
pop3 access until now, you are probably discovering that they aren't
making it obvious how to enable pop3 forwarding for you. Makes it kind
of hard to get your email off their system before it becomes fee based,
doesn't it?

What they aren't telling you is that until April 24th, the flag they
are using to control whether you have pop3 access is still changable by you!

Here's what you do:

Log into your Yahoo! account and go here. This should be the Marketing Preferences page.

Enable the last option ONLY, the one that says "Special offers from selected Yahoo! partners brought to you by Yahoo! Delivers."

jcv: One thing I'm starting to realize is that I don't have to have experience in something to have an interest in it as far as grad school is concerned.
jcv: Like, I'm interested in robotics, but I've never done anything with it.
lindsey: True, but you won't really know how interesting it is until you're into it for a while, I think. So you have the best information about your interest based on things that you actually have done.
jcv: But, I have done most of the things I have because they were economically viable, not because they interested me, really.
jcv: I'm a lesser earl of mining the known load.
lindsey: That comment was about CS research, not CS practice.
jcv: Still, it was funny.
lindsey: I think mining the known lode is more about just digging deeper and deeper into some narrow little field that's easy to work on and easy to get publications.
lindsey: Funny!
lindsey: (what a remarkably-ambiguous exclamation)
jcv: Yeah.
jcv: Hygene!
lindsey: But that makes perfect sense; no verbs necessary.
jcv: Why don't you drive down this weekend and give me advice.
jcv: ?
lindsey: Dernit! This one-hour job is taking all afternoon.
jcv: 'cause I keep talking to you.
lindsey: Well, yeah, there's some context switch cost, btu there's just a bunch of bugs in this thing that I'm trying to fix.
lindsey: somebody else's bugs.
lindsey: Sure, I'll be there in a few minutes.
jcv: I don't know who's advice I'd value with regards to this. Most people have their own agenda.
lindsey: It's a computation of goodness and cost.
lindsey: I'm glad I opted to err on the side of grad school, though.
lindsey: though I didn't have house.
lindsey: ^house^a house^
jcv: The more common thing would be for me to stay here and work at Some Local Company.
jcv: But, there is value in following the road less travelled.
lindsey: Dern yeah!
jcv: maybe "common" is the wrong word. "Traditional" or "conventional" is probably more acurate.
lindsey: Yeah, the path of least resistance usually runs to the gutter.
lindsey: :D
jcv: Amen.
jcv: Or the ocean.
lindsey: Well, but lots of sewers in between.
jcv: I like the beach.
lindsey: I don't. Sunburn.
lindsey: Stinging ocean creatures.
jcv: Sharks!
jcv: (that's an exclamation that needs no accompanist)